FISC Judges Should Threaten NSA with Criminal Prosecution More Often
This James Bamford description of NSA efforts to avoid criminal prosecution in a 1975 investigation convinced me to point to evidence that then FISA Chief Judge John Bates -- who is normally fairly deferential to the Executive Branch -- cowed…
Update on Lavabit
I've been trying to keep an eye on the public information about the government's demand on Lavabit. And in a new interview with Ars Technica, Ladar Levison basically gives us a multiple choice guess on what the request was: either altering the…
As with Manning Leak, Snowden Leak Reveals DOD Doesn't Protect Security
MSNBC has an update to the continuing saga of "Omigod the NSA has inadequate security." It explains why the "thin client" system the NSA had (one source calls it 2003 technology) made it so easy for Edward Snowden to take what he wanted.
In…
"Credibility"
An embarrassing number of people in DC have been saying publicly since Friday that we have to launch cruise missiles against Bashar al-Assad or risk the "credibility" of the United States. John McCain. Mike McCaul. Adam Schiff. Former NSC staffer…
Are the Brits Trying to Protect British Telecom?
In addition to her latest stories describing the generalized spying the NSA and GCHQ engage in, Laura Poitras today also tells her side of the David Miranda story. In it, she reveals the hard drives destroyed at the Guardian included details…
How Long Until ESPN Brand Is Damaged By Money Trumping Safety?
ESPN stands perilously close to damaging its brand with repeated recent moves that appear to place their income stream ahead of safety. After working closely with Frontline for well over a year on a project documenting the effects of concussion…
Laura Poitras Chips at the Terrorism Lie
Laura Poitras has another piece in Spiegel laying out NSA's spying on diplomats -- this time focusing on how NSA acquired blueprints of the new EU building in NYC to facilitate tapping it all.
To a significant degree, Poitras lays out how…
How the NCTC Gets Its NSA Data
I'm working on a more substantive post on the Section 702 Semiannual Compliance Assessment released last week as part of the I Con dump.
But for the moment, I want to point to a passage that begins to answer a question I asked two months…
The Google/Yahoo Problem: Fruit of the Poison MCT?
OK, this will be my last post (at least today) to attempt to understand why some Internet providers incurred so many costs associated with the response to the FISA Court's October 3, 2011 decision that the government had improperly collected…
Parchin Asphalt: Obstructing Sampling or Sealing the Record?
With the opportunity for significant progress in negotiating a peaceful settlement regarding Iran's nuclear activities looking better than it has in a long time, I had intended to ignore the latest bleating over developments at Parchin. The…
Upstream Internet Collection and Minimization Procedures
As I noted in this post, the Guardian's report on the aftermath of the October 3, 2011 FISA Court decision seemed to suggest that Google and Yahoo content was collected as upstream collection, not from their servers.
Changes made in the minimization…
More Contractor Problems -- And FISC Disclosure Problems?
In the updated minimization procedures approved in 2011, the NSA added language making clear that the procedures applied to everyone doing analysis for NSA.
For the purposes of these procedures, the terms "National Security Agency" and "NSA…
NSA's Inspector General Appears to Be Disappearing 299 Deliberate Violations a Year
Bloomberg is getting a lot of attention for reporting the results of a still-classified (and unleaked) NSA Inspector General audit showing that NSA averages one rule violation a year.
Some National Security Agency analysts deliberately ignored…
Has Federal Use of Drones Violated EO 12333?
The Privacy and Civil Liberties Oversight Board just sent a letter to Eric Holder and James Clapper requesting that they have all the Intelligence Committee agencies update what are minimization procedures (though the letter doesn't call them…
How to Get the Government to Ease Up: Involve Scott Shane
This is fairly extraordinary. BuzzFeed reports that in an effort to alleviate some of the pressure from the UK it is bringing in the NYT -- but just one reporter from the NYT -- to report on the Snowden stories.
“In a climate of intense pressure…
Why Would PRISM Providers Need to Pay Millions for New Certificates on Upstream Collection?
The Guardian has a story that rebuts the happy tales about quick compliance being told about the October 3, 2011 and subsequent FISA Court opinions. Rather than implementing a quick fix to the Constitutional violations John Bates identified,…
Keith Alexander's Dinner Theater
A bunch of people have been discussing Stanford Professor Jennifer Granick's account of a dinner she had with NSA Director and CyberComander Keith Alexander. The main storyline describes how, three weeks ago, Lying Keith promised Granick that…
Yellowcake In the Soles of His Shoes
Last night, The Smoking Gun and then CBS reported on the latest sting carried out by our government to keep us safe from people too stupid for their own good. This time, instead of the FBI setting up the security theater sting, it was an…
Not-So-Trusted Computing: German Government Worried About Windows 8 Risks
Microsoft’s “trusted computing platform.”
Microsoft’s “secure boot” technology.
The doublespeak almost writes itself these days. Whose “trusted computing”? Whose “platform”? And whose “secure boot”?
At least…
NSA Has a Database Problem
Back in 2009 when the government released what we now know is a FISA Court of Review decision ordering Yahoo to cooperate in PRISM, I questioned a passage of the decision that relied on the government's claim that it doesn't keep a database…